Your humble blogger is a bit under the weather still and separately very bummed by the Schneiderman news. Sone of my correspondents and I had noticed him taking a back seat to other AGs in launching mortgage-related cases and had been concerned it was a bad sign, but I didn’t want to go out guns a blazing in the absence of evidence. But this looks much worse than anything I could have imagined.

European Central Bank Moves to Avoid Loss on Greek Bonds New York Times. This strikes me as hilarious, maybe because now is awfully late to get worried about this sort of thing. Now in fact the “private” bondholders have been asked to take deeper haircuts all along, but the Times headline (and even to a degree the story) somehow treats this as news.

Although the news is indeed somber over the Schneiderman deal, I have to complain about the coffee spew on my monitor this morning when I read the following. The segue was as smooth as fast moving asphalt to a fleshy knee:

“….concerned it was a bad sign, but I didn’t want to go out guns a blazing in the absence of evidence. But this looks much worse than anything I could have imagined. Dolphins are multilingual! Scientists record mammals talking ‘whale’… in their sleep.”

Wasn’t this obvious from the start? You guys should have known better. Seriously.

“Cody Willard says:
September 6, 2011 at 7:23 pm
From Elizabeth Warren to Tom Miller, how many times have we built up one of these Republican/Democrat elites into a supposed anti-elite force who “might be the only elected official willing to stick his/her neck out” only to see them cave and then have to backtrack our embrace of said hypocrite. How long til we/you/I have to admit that Schneiderman is just another spoke in their wheel who is playing their game and simply faking their resistance?

I had hoped Elizabeth Warren would join with Ron Paul or something so that we could finally end this false Right/Left/Repub/Democ paradigm…and I had hoped Tom Miller really would “send some of these bankers to jail”. Now we have Warren trying to paint herself into a Democrat-pay-for-play Senate seat and of course Miller’s backtracking from prosecutor to crony is legendary now among the educated blogosphere.

Schneiderman will betray us all in a similar fashion — he is fully endorsed, stamped and funded by the same Republican/Democrat Fascist Regime as the rest of them.

Our only chance is to go post-partisan and vote exclusively away from the R/D paradigm. How hard can that really be?”

Love your newsletter. but I can’t stand to be down even 0.3% so I just read it and fantasize about a 10 bagger straight up with no risk. My problem is: it’s my own money and I don’t want to lose a penny of it. makes it hard.

with all these politicians, it’s always other people’s money. and what is it that’s theirs? that’s the problem at a theoretical level. God King and Country are so abstract.

I wonder if there really is a cult behind all this. I’m inclined to think there could be & it has something to do with alien abductions and inter-dimensional consciousness projection. David Icke may be correct, in a weird way, even though I first thought he was a psychotic, but at a metaphorical level he may be on to something the way a slightly deranged mind finds a point of meaning that escapes the average sanity. These things weren’t going on in the 1930s and the colors were more muted then too, as you can see from the paintings. Now everything jangles like necklaces of barbed wire and nails, like a boiling crown of thorns. How can an ambitious mind navigate this and keep its composure? It gets taken in, complete and unconscious. Like something out of Ionescu. Where;s the separation of power when it’s all a whirlpool? In the woods alone with the crows, where you’re only a nation of one.

Funny, that you brought up David Icke. Just went through his speech he gave at the Brixton Academy.

What impressed me was his truly eloquent perspective on consciousness (first part). To me it resembled something of a combination of views on consciousness. A mixture of Einstein, Dalai Lama, Deepak Chopra, Krishnamurti and Timothy Leary. Well done David Icke.

@jimmy — don’t worry. he’s been mentioned before more than once and you are correct. It is a wormhole worth avoiding. mentioning it with some degree of irony doesn’t validate it. but it is a peculiar phenomenon, of interest to students of consciousness, as it transcends known states of mental illness into something far stranger.

people really do need to take responsibility for their inner reptiles, which some folks can apparently see like ghosts. ;)

The dead sea scrolls explains it. Testament of Amram.

Otherwise, yes, he’s a very bright and articulate guy and I’m not surprised he touches on things in mainstream “new age/new physics” thought. Frankly I haven’t read his work so I can’t critique him too much, one way or the other. He’s been tagged with anti-semitic rantings, but I do not know if that’s true. Anyway, interesting as this is, it’s getting a little off the topic of finance capture and political ambition. My apologies, Yves.

“IN THE PALACES OF MEMORY: How We Build the Worlds Inside Our Heads” by George Johnson (New York, Vintage Books/Random House, Inc., 1991) — Johnson is author also of “ARCHITECTS OF FEAR: Conspiracy Theories and Paranoia in American Politics” and MACHINERY OF THE MIND: Inside the New Science of Artificial Intelligence”;

wow. But honestly, even if I read every book on that last, I’d be just as confused as I am now. But just with different words to describe it. that’s why the red red wine and the xanax are so helpful to me. two friends and me, under the stars. haha

Here in Massachusetts the “progressives” are gushing over Warren’s run for senate. While she gives every appearance of sincerity, I ask my progressive friends this question: “Which is more likely? She changes Washington, or Washington changes her?”

Good for you! I wouldn’t even ask that question to most of my friends, because either they would not understand it (despite being successful college graduates) or just get angry. My strategy these days is to merely say I distrust both parties and try and change the conversation to something more pleasurable. That’s because most of the folks I know still believe in childlike tribal fashion that “all/most Republicans are evil” while liberals/Democrats are good, because they are nicer and kinder. People tend not to challenge their own narratives or beliefs, as I did, because i used to believe those things too…. until I realized how naive (uninformed) I was.

The world we see that seems so insane is the result of a belief system that is not working. To perceive the world differently, we must be willing to change our belief system, let the past slip away, expand our sense of now, and dissolve the fear in our minds.

Ask your “progressive” friends for the Warren quote where she says that banksters CEOs should be prosecuted for accounting control fraud. You won’t find it. That is true for all the legacy party Presidential candidates — Warren being set up for 2016 — without exception including Ron Paul. Greenspan admits that fraud is real, but apparently none of the banksters committed it. None of the legacy party candidates are serious. Warren isn’t serious.

My observation is the people really don’t want to let go of the myth of the savior or hero who will make the world a better place. Personally I’m hoping for a return to realism… I think idealism is important as a guide, but it should be anchored by realistic views of the limitations of human beings, their societies and their leaders.

Someone here at NC recommended a book which I just finished this morning and I can’t recommend to strongly enough! However if you are a committed utopian of any stripe, you will not like this book, so my recommendation is conditional.

Black Mass: Apocalyptic Religion and the Death of Utopia, by John Gray

Yes Leonova, I totally understand that. I used to be in that camp myself, and it was not easy to leave it at first. Took alot of thinking and reflecting.

But I think there is an important point being made in John Gray’s book about the dangers of idealism. Obama was elected based on out of control idealism, IMO, and maybe it’s time to be less idealistic and more realistic about politics, power and money. Feel free to disagree with that, of course.

Leonova, I believe that we are all equals here. Do you believe in pluralism? Or do you believe there is only one right way to think about anything? Can we not agree to disagree without animosity? Or agree that there many valid viewpoints on any issue, and that all are interesting and relevant in some way or another?

I learn something here at NC everyday from commenters I agree with and commenters I disagree with. I get bored with echo chambers. Vive la difference!

I disagree with the premise that Obama was elected as a savior. In contrast, Peggy Noonan among others had declared Bush the savior complete with rainbows and dolphins some 8 years before.
Obama was elected simply for being Not Bush and Not McCain/Palin. Bush was a bumbler and became unappetizing even to conservatives, who continued to grouse that Bush and McCain were not “real” conservatives, leaving space for the usual suspects to nominate Obama. Relatively few people were conned by the marketing hype around Obama; however, the media developed that narrative and ran with it and its inevitable antithesis.
Newsmedia narratives have become as stale and hackneyed as the television shows that contextualize them.

I see CALPERS was finally able to put out its annual report 7 months after its fiscal year ended–how hard can it be? Also, they had a pathetic cash flow from their investments–$2.7 billion on $240 billion in assets. These guys aren’t the smart money; they’re the dumb/crooked money.

Yeah, sure – attack a pension fund for retired workers – for being “crooked/ stupid” with THEIR money – that is,for not earning enough, in your opinion, compared to – who? – oh, yeah, the “smart” money boys (and they’re “honest”,too? – as implied by your contrast of such with the “dumb/crooked” pension fund managers?)?

Do you therefor propose to give the workers’ aggregated and accumulated pension funds to the “smart” (and therefore morally superior, in your book – certainly not “crooked”, like you called those “dumb” public employee pension fund managers, no sir!) money-folk to manage?

Tell me, did you learn nothing from contemplating Mr Madoff’s long long record of comparatively stellar “smart” returns on investment?

If so, what? That returns on capital managed by honest capable people never vary or lag, and out-perform others?

Do you contend that “crooked” money managers are revealed by their lack of performance compared to “fast, smart” operators like Mr. Madoff?

And this holds true, despite the economy being as it has been since 2007?

You got me all wrong–my point is that they are the dumb/crooked money *because* they have given their money to the “smart” guys to manage. They would be much better off in an index fund.

If they are only earning about 1.2% cash flow from their investments (go look at their numbers, I’m not making it up) then they are doing something wrong. It’s not that they are “making up” stellar returns; it’s that they’re doing a pathetic job of generating cash flow to pay their obligations. Their choices to go with the “smart” money has only enriched an army of consultants and managers.

aet, there was a time when Pension Funds were Defined Benefit Plans which were held in a kind of trust for the retirees, which increased over time. Sometime in the early 80’s I believe, it became *acceptable* for Corporations to appropriate the increase, by fiat. Then, it became *acceptable* for Corporations to treat the principal plus the increase as their own money, by fiat. Just like that.

How did this happen, and by whose authority. It’s just creeping embezzlement with Corporate Executive/Board impunity, leading ultimately to the larceny of MF Global/J.P. Morgue with dispensation by the City of London.

I notice in every internet ‘debate,’ there is a lot of friction. Then I further notice that that is also the case in life, among humans, in general. If some genius, hero scientist can come up with a way to capture that energy…

“That design was a pattern known as a Fermat spiral, in which each element is set at a constant angle of 137° to the previous one. It is most familiar as the arrangement of the florets that make up a sunflower head.”

Very cool. It’s always great to see math and science come together in unexpected ways, and when they come together with beauty it’s even better.

Allow me to express my annual gratitude to those with the fortitude to stick out the State of the Union address. I honestly cannot stomach watching politicians applauding themselves, and I am grateful to those who can so that the rest of us do not have to.

Dear STO;
Be careful what you wish for. Computerized politics is rapidly coming to pass. Flash polls, automated, (and thus easily ‘compromised,’) voting systems, electronic phone banks, electronic ‘contributions,’ and lastly, but most dangerously, electronic tracking and identification of political speech, (at least on the Internet,) have us practically within the grasp of those ‘powers and dominions’ who can muster the resources to employ those resources.
Isaac Asimov wrote his Resident of the United States story in a ‘younger’ age. What was then percieved as ‘cute’ and humourously cynical has become a dystopian reality. While Asimov, being a practicing academic, held what comes across as a basic faith in Technology and Reason. His version of the Future would have been, at the least, tolerable. What’s happening now more closely approximates something from the Canon of Phillip K. Dick! Do Androids Dream? We might soon find out.

Here’s another idea. I recently read The Sociopath Next Door by Martha Stout, and she asserts that sociopaths make up about 4% of the population, most of whom slip under the radar. She also notes that the brain regions involved in empagthy that an MRI lights up in normal people do not do so in the cases of sociopaths. So, how about requiring all people running for federal office to undergo a brain MRI to determine whether or not they’re sociopathic?

Dear Maximilien;
I was under the impression that a politician sticking out his “State of the Union,” and done in ‘Congress’ no less, was still against the law in most civilized jurisdictions. Oh, how the Mighty are Fallen!

RE Schneiderman: I think that Obama has said I am going to have Holder leave in the next 12 months or so and if you play nice as the Chair of my Kabuki committee, you are next in line for the US AG job. The timing of Holder’s departure is dependent upon the roar of the masses and Obama’s polling numbers. If he is losing come October, Schneiderman will be moved into place to signal Obama’s new tough on Wall Street attitude to the 99%. Any way you slice it, Obama wins and we collectively lose.

Officials from Roswell were on hand to highlight what the vaccine can do. They say the NY-ESO-1 dendritic cell vaccine has the potential to “eradicate cancer cells and prevent disease relapse.”

The new NY-ESO-1 dendritic cell vaccine is expected to show great promise in patients with bladder, brain, breast, esophageal, gastrointestinal, hepatocellular, kidney, lung, melanoma, ovarian, prostate, sarcoma and uterine tumors.

The NY-ESO-1 vaccine, tailor-made for each patient, will be produced in RPCI’s Therapeutic Cell Production Facility. Dr. Christopher Choi, director of the facility, says this is the first government-regulated study of its kind and it’s the first time the vaccine will be tested in a hospital setting rather than in a medical lab. “We believe that our facility’s custom-made barrier isolator, the unit in which the vaccines are manufactured, is the first of its kind,” said Choi.

Thank you very much for this! My Dad was involved as a volunteer with some early investigation of this approach at Johns Hopkins before he died in ’94. It is too late for him – but i hope this really works out …

Astrologers aren’t just gloomy about 2012. We’re gloomy into the next decade. One thing after another. I don’t know that any sane one of us is predicting revolution. The old saw about predicting Wall Street collapses comes to mind, or Tyl’s legendary 1997 prediction that Clinton would be removed from office, etc.

Last week in my newsletter I predicted Newt’s win in South Carolina, but that was already obvious. Newt had been stung by Mitt’s earlier attack and decided to go all out. Newt is a full moon guy (Gemini-Sagittarius). DO NOT underestimate a full moon when they’re on the warpath. (This is the guy who single-handedly wrecked the US government, remember.) Newt will destroy Romney but self-destruct in the process. What happens next, I dunno. My crystal ball has gone black.

One doesn’t have to be anti-science and fringy (astrology, mis-interpreted Mayan mythologists, apocalyptic nut religionists, etc) to be down on the next decade.

As a real scientist with a firm footing in objective reality, I too am pessimistic about the next 10 years. All I see is looting, more and more blatant and in-your-face as the 1%ers see that they are, indeed, immune to ethics, to laws, and prosecution. As they see that the entirety of ALL political systems in the West are fully infested with the metastatic cancer of Big Finance, Wall Street, and Disaster Capitalist scum they see that they can, quite literally, get away with murder. As the sheeple look upon it and cry out in anger but also absolutely wedded to nonviolent resistance, the 1% can laugh and sneer at the hapless, self-defeated chanters and song singers. That or too many who are angry have been stupidly herded into the “Tea Party” whereby they can demand even MORE of what the 1% wants (“Thank you sir! May I have another?”) all to their own personal detriment.

The next 10 years is going to suck more than the last 10 years…at least for 99% of us. The fact that the 1% has got their’s is all that matters.

An Ass and a Fox went into partnership and sallied out to forage for food together. They hadn’t gone far before they saw a Lion coming their way, at which they were both dreadfully frightened. But the Fox thought he saw a way of saving his own skin, and went boldly up to the Lion and whispered in his ear, “I’ll manage that you shall get hold of the Ass without the trouble of stalking him, if you’ll promise to let me go free.” The Lion agreed to this, and the Fox then rejoined his companion and contrived before long to lead him by a hidden pit, which some hunter had dug as a trap for wild animals, and into which he fell. When the Lion saw that the Ass was safely caught and couldn’t get away, it was to the Fox that he first turned his attention, and he soon finished him off, and then at his leisure proceeded to feast upon the Ass.

RE: Occupy Infiltration… Mark my words, some day we will likely see articles in the same vein on MoveON, Move To Amend dot borg, Public Citizen, Common Cause and countless others. I understand why a new, small, lose, unfunded often unprofessional “movement” has these problems, but the willingness of so many GA’s to so quickly align with and rely on outside groups spells much trouble for OWS.For none of those groups mentioned abocve operate in an open way… that alone should be all the vetting needed at this point to reject them out of hand. And perhaps most dangerous of all… the way affinity groups operate, often closed and full of people who’s modus operandi come across just like those described in the article.

Occupy needs to just be Occupy for a while and nobody else. Quit joining with outside groups. Let them endorse Occupy if they want, but Occupy should no more endorse/work with outside groups than outside political parties. People need much more practice in the new system.. they need to understand what they are trying/ a part of…or they will simply become what they claim to be fighting..

John Jay Chapman said much the same in his 1900 book Practical Agitation. I would summarize it as: Hold to your principles because they are all you really have. Let those who want follow your lead, but the day you compromise with the powers that be, you lose your credibility and their taint extends to you.

If you’re going to be arrested at these Occupies, why not do it for use of a bullhorn or amplification ?

To get a sense of what the Occupies are up against, look at Allen Dulles’ “Germany’s Underground”, Chapter 2. The Evolution of a Police State.

p.20 forward,
” “Occupation” by one’s own government, however vicious that government may be, creates a very different popular reaction than that which springs from occupation by a foreign government.”

You can be assured these people are prepared for Occupy. Surely Mr. Dulles foresaw its possibility, himself.

Re Flower Power. Decentralized is better, more democratic and is practical. Centralized power generation, no matter how green is still centralized economic and political
power. Plus, you have the transmission line losses and the need for the transmission infrastructure etc.

Highly recommend this guy’s website. He is the Grand Daddy of all the economic doomers and has some very useful links, charts and other things that while too sophisticated for
you are useful for the uninitiated. Scroll down for the energy charts.

Absence that, there are still other minimal energy options without fancy modern technology. Take a look, for example, at electricity-free refrigeration from at least 400 BC. The ancient Persians used yakhchals (with windcatchers to catch, what else, wind) to store ice in the middle of summer in the desert.

Yeah, artists would get to keep about 90% of the profits as opposed to . . . . what do they get now?

No wonder the AG was so eager to charge this case–his owners in corporate America stood to lose money.

Also, saw some freaking out that the feds may now have records of all individuals that uploaded or downloaded from the site.

The laws give these entertainment companies the right to crazy amounts of damages–like $150,000 per violation. And this is not dischargeable in bankruptcy. Could technically make a lot of people permanent slaves to entertainment companies.

But imagine how ticked off many 20-somethings will be if this comes even partially true. Sure, many of these “pirates” knew they were breaking the rules but it was something a lot of their peers were doing.

But just to play it out . . . since the feds seized servers and computers say they pass along a list of 100,000 IP addresses and other info to the entertainment companies. If I were working for these companies I would do an analysis on the financial health of these targets and maybe sue the top 5% of them, or something, then basically sell the rights to go after the other people to debt collector type firms, etc. The Obama administration is taking the political heat so the companies might as well go after a bunch of people.

Dear WWM;
I hadn’t thought of it as a business model. That’s why I’m not rich I guess. However, it would be a perfect illustration of the top .01% gobbling up chunks of the soon to be ex-middle class. Since the Oligarchs have trained the poor to aspire to the status of Henchman, (in both modern and ancient senses,) they probably feel secure enough to liquidate the remnants of the old Middle Class. It might be a stretch, but comparisons between now and the end stages of the Roman Empire seem apropos. Then, impoverished artisans and tradesmen fled the urban centres and accepted serf status on large country estates in exchange for peace and security. Many of them became armed retainers of the local lord. Today we have Xe and its bretheren, serving the modern lords. All we need now is the withering away of the State. Marx is spinning so fast in his grave we should put some magnets on him and harvest the electricity.

Dear Hugh;
Much as I like your Marxian analysis of Alice, I prefer Molloys’ Freudian trope. Once one accepts Molloys’ attribution of the authorship of the ‘Alice” books to Victoria Regina, what was previously absurd becomes quite reasonable and pragmatic.
PS: I like the race Alice becomes embroiled in for metaphorical enjoyment.

Say what? The Alice books were written by Queen Vicky? Wow, what a lady!

I’ve never noticed anything absurd in the Alice books, or even The Hunting of the Snark for that matter. Certainly not as absurd as what I read about going on in the U.S.

With a bit of philosophical understanding and some historical context, Alice takes a perfectly normal yet entertaining voyage through dream-land. With present-day reality, on the other hand, philosophical understanding and historical context actually increase the absurdity.

“VICTORIAN CHILDREN” by Graham Ovenden and Robert Melville (London, Academy Editions; New York, St. Martin’s Press; 1972) — including photograps by “Lewis Carroll” of Alice P. Liddell c. 1860 in provocative pose, and of other little girls. This is what we call today: “soft porn.”

Considering the pictures are of seriously under-age little girls, and the person making the pictures was the Reverend Dodgeson, I don’t think we would call it ‘soft porn’ today. Reverends are expected to keep such things to themselves now.

Dear Birch;
How about “Soft Focus on the Family?”
For another take on Victorian ‘use’ and abuse of children, try finding a copy of Louis Malles “Pretty Baby.”
Dodgson asked for Alices hand in marriage, while she was still pre-pubescent. Such things were known of and accepted at the time, but, luckily for the little girl, Alices mother firmly disapproved. An excellent film exploring the story is 1985’s “Dreamchild,” starring Ian Holm and Coral Browne. I highly recommend it. (Now if I could only find a copy of “The Royal Rascal!”)

Tons of awesome plants out there to make stimulating tea with, if you need it.

Coffee, as well as sugar, tea, and cocoa, were the soft-core drugs that the early mega-corps imported from around the world to run their industrial factories in Europe and Elsewhere. Who could ever leave their rural farm for an 18 hour factory life in Enclosure days if coffee or tea wasn’t involved? They globalized racial slavery to grow the drugs. All for growth!

Refined sugar is the gateway drug to crack cocaine. It may also cause market volatility.

Dear Beard;
That’s exactly what they are trying to do, here in the States at least. Ever look at the figures for prescriptions for Ritalin and like drugs written to pacify ‘problem’ children in the U.S. school systems? It was one of the many reasons we home schooled our children.

To other alchemists who worked primarily with vegetable matter and processes, rather than the mineral work, the Green Lion was an image of the green raw energy of nature, “the green fuse which drives the flower” as Dylan Thomas elegantly expressed it in one of his poems. Here the Green Lion which devours the sun is the green pigment chlorophyll. The green leaves of the plant are formed out of the energy of sunlight. Alchemists often attempted to create living processes in their flasks and looked especially for precipitates or crystallisations which resembled leaves or plant forms. The Green Lion here could be a plant sap extract which was often the prima materia for their alchemical work. The Gryphon, half-eagle and half-lion, was sometimes associated with the end of this stage. The eagle nature of the Gryphon gave this hybrid being an ability to ascend in the flask, so it marked, in a sense, the spiritualisation of the Green Lion.

“A New York Times analysis of S.E.C. enforcement actions over the last 15 years, published in November, found at least 51 cases in which the S.E.C. concluded that Wall Street firms had broken antifraud laws that, as part of settlements of earlier fraud cases, they had pledged never to breach. The 51 cases spanned 19 firms, including nearly all of the biggest financial companies — Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan Chase & Company and Bank of America among them.”

I love that ‘pledged never to breach’ part.

Imagine how that would work if you applied it to bank robberies. First time offenders would not be charged, but would be asked to promise not to do it again. Second time offenders could keep the money, but would be charged with making false statements to police.

Well, the O-man continues to burnish his “Call of Duty” creds, this time sending “his” SEALs into Somalia to pull out two hostages taken by kidnappers some months ago. The Globe and Mail’s story concentrates a good deal on the re-orientation of US military involvement in “power projection”, from conventional invasion-and-occupation to drones and JSOC ops to “take out” Merka’s many “enemies”. The G&M also took note of Obama’s pandering to “our warriors” during his SOTU schtick, contrasting how cool the military is compared to “politicians in Washington”.

Obama evokes the military as a fix for ‘broken’ Washington “Leon. Good job tonight. Good job tonight.”

It was the first hint that – far from Washington and the political spectacle of the president delivering his annual State of the Union speech – a daring military drama had unfolded.

As President Barack Obama glad-handed his way through Congress, he stopped and spoke briefly to his Defence Secretary Leon Panetta. The ‘good job’ comment set of a flurry of speculation but Mr. Obama made no mention of it in his speech.
Unknown to most in the Capital and a nation watching on television, a team of U.S. Navy Seals – the same Special Forces group that had killed Osama bin Laden last spring – had attacked a Somali pirate hideout, freeing two aid workers held hostage three months ago.

The helicopter raid rescued Jessica Buchanan, 32, and American and Poul Hagen, 60, a Dane. Somali reports said nine Somali captors were killed in a fierce firefight. There were no American causalities.

“The United States will not tolerate the abduction of our people, and will spare no effort to secure the safety of our citizens and to bring their captors to justice,” Mr. Obama said later in a statement released by the White House. U.S. Special Forces have a base in the tiny east African nation of Djibouti.
[…]
(but wait!)On Iran, he drew a rousing cheer for his reiteration that he was willing to go to war – if necessary – to keep Tehran’s Islamic theocracy from getting nuclear weapons. “Let there be no doubt: America is determined to prevent Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, and I will take no options off the table to achieve that goal,’ he said.
[more…]https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/worldview/obama-evokes-the-military-as-a-fix-for-broken-washington/article2314189/

And:

Hostage rescue illustrates Obama’s new take on military might Sending special forces deep into hostile territory to free hostages underscores President Barack Obama’s reliance on unconventional warfare.

Once again, he turned to highly-trained warriors – the same special forces from the elite U.S. Navy Seals group who killed Osama bin Laden last year in Pakistan – to strike at enemies around the world.
[…]
The stealthy, nighttime operation once again shows Mr. Obama’s preference for special forces and missile-firing drones, as well as a bold willingness to hunt down terror suspects or free Americans. Last May’s killing of the fugitive al-Qaeda leader in Pakistan, the use of a missile-firing drone to assassinate an American citizen, the al-Qaeda cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, in Yemen, and repeated raids – not all of them successful – against Somali brigands mark Mr. Obama as a risk-taking Commander in Chief.

According to The Wall Street Journal, the Pentagon plans a major expansion of its global network of drones and special-operations bases in a fundamental realignment aimed to project U.S. power across the globe. While scaling back its conventional forces, the military calls for a 30-per-cent “surge” in its drone fleet and will deploy more teams of special-operations forces to “lily pad” bases where they can foster local allies and launch their own hunt-and-kill missions.
[more…]https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/hostage-rescue-illustrates-obamas-new-take-on-military-might/article2314380/

And, as Charlie Savage reports today in the NYT, all this plays out against a background of increased “security prosecutions” of people alleged to have breached the acute secrecy surrounding much of Obama’s (and Cheney/Bush before him) machinations as “commander-in-chief”…Glenn Greenwald has more on the latter here:Rules of American justice: a tale of three cases http://www.salon.com/2012/01/24/rules_of_american_justice_a_tale_of_three_cases/singleton/

Drones and Special Forces are fine, but for “real men”, there’s nothing like bombing the shit out of yet another Muslim country.